Learning Software

I don't know where it all came from, but it seems as if every day there is an exciting new tool available to use in your classroom.  But as these new tools become available, there's been an interesting and, in my opinion, unanticipated distinction made between them: public and non-public.  I've heard lots of different terms based on the tool and the market the tool is trying to speak to, but when it comes down to it some tools will let anyone join/share/access content while others enforce some means of access control. 

One of the first stories like this was between MySpace and Facebook.  MySpace saw an initially much higher success rate by being completely open (to join as well as to view pages).  Facebook, on the other hand, would not let you join unless you were a student/faculty at one of the supported colleges and would only let you see the information of your friends or fellow classmates.  Eventually Facebook started letting anyone join, but the information is still available to only your friends and those in your "network."  Then there's Ning, the exciting make-your-own-social network tool, which gives the best of both worlds by offering the ability to keep your network public or make it private to members only. 

Twitter requires an account to add content, but anyone can access the tweets at anytime.  The hundreds of options for hosting a blog have privacy options allowing you to setup allowed admins, authors, and readers.  And one of the tools I've discussed earlier called Noteflight has a feature set aimed specifically at classrooms.  This feature set is designed to be private.

And it all surprises me as to why there is a push for privacy controls.  In a lot of ways, I would really anticipate the interest and momentum to be outward towards public, open discourse.  Isn't the crux of Web 2.0 tools to establish connections on a scale never before possible?  Is there really less value placed on interfacing with experts and establishing your voice in a global arena? 

Don't get me wrong.  My friends and I have our own private blog where we share and discuss items of interest.  By making the blog private, we have a level of intimacy possible only by the assurance of a familiar audience.  In a lot of ways, in retrospect, this has enabled even the more timid in the group to share openly as they only have to get past the theoretical judgements of us instead of the whole world. 

I do not undervalue this.  In fact, drawing the parallel to my work, I am always very encouraged when I hear teachers talking about using the anonymous panel submission feature in DyKnow to encourage a more open discussion of sensitive matters.  I agree that it's critically important to find ways to engage all students.  Also, it's admittedly hard for me to understand all the issues related to public sharing of content since I'm not in a position of support of such a system.  DyKnow was designed to be a classroom-focused, centrally managed system, but there are no separate classes in a public forum- just the forum itself.  So naturally my experience with the very real concerns of a pubilc system have been vicariously through blog posts and articles I've read. 

And of course I understand that there are real problems that must be overcome.  There's a very real need to be cautious when putting student information online.  We all know that if a student isn't safe, they won't be able to learn.  There's also a need to be cognizant of potential legal liability on the school for content published (although this could lead to an excellent discussion of freedom of speech and libel).  And there's going to be a question of parent and community buy-in (where applicable): if parents don't want their kids' content publicly posted there is a responsibility to respect that.  Finally, there's the extra diligence that is required when moderating comments, etc that may be coming from the outside world.  After all the main advantage of a public system, other than sharing with the world the accomplishments of your students, is the ability to open up the discourse to the outside world.

But in the face of these concerns, I wonder if we're throwing out the baby with the bathwater, and I wonder (and would really appreciate thoughts on this) if the opportunity to legitimately and authentically engage in a global discussion is worth finding reasonable answers to these concerns (for those that appear to be more than trivial).  And does the sense of ownership and pride that would come from publishing overcome any theoretical comfort the walled garden can provide (and does, as I would expect, the real-life social pressure from classmates to contribute keep any concerns in the periphery). 

Finally, I wonder how this applies to DyKnow.  As I said before, DyKnow was created to be centered around the idea of the classroom.  Roles are defined along educator/student lines and all users are organized into classes.  This has let us be a centrally manageable and well-organized solution thus far, but in our greater mission to help increase student learning through technology, is this a leap we need to take?  What are your thoughts on challenges implementing public content vs the walled garden variety?  Do you feel that classroom technologies should all move towards an open/public model?